The United States survives so long as at least one of its major parties is politically and intellectually healthy. I don't think the Republican Party, or I should say the Republican Party as the vehicle for modern American conservative ideas, survives with Donald Trump.

I think that for the United States, Hillary Clinton, as awful as I find her, is a survivable event. I'm not so sure about Donald Trump.

When it comes to trade, when it comes to standing up to countries like North Korea, when it comes to standing up to guys like Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump is not a conservative.

I will never vote for Donald Trump.

It may be a truism that the country cannot be strong abroad unless it is strong at home, but it's also a fact that the country's economic prosperity depends on its security abroad - not only in the core of the liberal democratic world but often well beyond it, too.

Since the end of World War II, U.S. presidents of both parties have recognized that foreign and domestic policy do not have to be pursued at the expense of each other.

Yes, Obama took over two wars from Bush - just as President Richard Nixon inherited Vietnam from President Lyndon Johnson and President Dwight Eisenhower inherited Korea from President Harry Truman. But at least the war in Iraq was all but won by 2009, thanks largely to the very surge Obama had opposed as a senator.

Every president inherits a mixed bag when he comes to office, and Obama's was hardly the worst.

Perhaps the reason Trump voters are so frequently the subject of caricature is that they so frequently conform to type.

The intelligent defense of free speech should not rest on the notion that we must tolerate every form of speech, no matter how offensive. It's that we should lean toward greater tolerance for speech we dislike, and reserve our harshest penalties only for the worst offenders.

There are necessary taboos and essential decencies in every morally healthy society.

Of course ABC and its parent company Disney were right to cancel the sitcom 'Roseanne' after its eponymous star, Roseanne Barr, wrote a racist tweet.

Donald Trump's more sophisticated defenders have long since mastered the art of pretending that the only thing that matters with his presidency is what it does, not what he says.

Barack Obama is probably the coolest president this country will ever have.

The most interesting conversation is not about why Donald Trump lies. Many public figures lie, and he's only a severe example of a common type. The interesting conversation concerns how we come to accept those lies.

When Trump attacks the news media, he's kicking a wounded animal.

If a public figure tells a whopping lie once in his life, it'll haunt him into his grave. If he lies morning, noon and night, it will become almost impossible to remember any one particular lie.

When you work at 'The Wall Street Journal,' the coins of the realm are truth and trust - the latter flowing exclusively from the former.

The more afraid we are of the shadow of racism, the more conscious we might become of our own unsuspected biases.

An abusive cop does not equal a bigoted police department.

Food insecurity is not remotely the same as hunger.

Institutionalized racism is an imaginary enemy.

My wife is German, so I know something about German energy policy.

Listen carefully to the global warming alarmists, and the main theme that emerges is that what the developed world needs is a large dose of penance. What's remarkable is the extent to which penance sells among a mostly secular audience. What is there to be penitent about?